U.S. and Iraqi Forces Seek Abducted Britons in Raid

DAVID S. CLOUD

Thursday

May 31, 2007 at 5:37 AM

U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Sadr City on Wednesday, looking for five British citizens abducted a day earlier from a nearby government building.

BAGHDAD, May 30 — American and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood on Wednesday, looking for five British citizens abducted a day earlier from a nearby government building, military and diplomatic officials said.

The search was part of a larger effort involving the military and Iraqi officials, and diplomats from Britain and the United States to locate the British men or make contact with their abductors, according to two Western diplomats. The operation began in the early morning as troops surrounded houses demanding information about the kidnapping victims, a resident of the area said.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an Army spokesman, confirmed that an operation was under way in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, but he would not say whether the troops were looking for the British kidnapping victims.

Separately, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, Dan Sreebny, said that two of its Iraqi employees were believed to have been kidnapped. He gave no further details.

In a statement, the American military condemned the bombing of a Sunni mosque in southwest Baghdad on Wednesday and another bombing of a Shiite mosque a day earlier. The statement did not provide a location for the earlier bombing, and it gave no details about whether people were killed or wounded in the attacks. The bombings could not be independently confirmed.

The British kidnapping victims, a business consultant and four bodyguards, were abducted Tuesday from a Finance Ministry complex by a large group of uniformed men in multiple vehicles. The men entered a guarded Finance Ministry complex in eastern Baghdad, took the Britons and left without firing a shot, according to witnesses and Iraqi officials.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview with Reuters that the Mahdi Army may have carried out the kidnappings in retaliation for the killing of the militia’s top commander by Iraqi special forces last week in Basra.

But Sheik Salah al-Ubaidi, a spokesman for the Sadr organization, denied involvement. “These claims are far from reality,” he said in an interview. “Baghdad has witnessed many kidnappings before, and the Mahdi Army has been accused many times, but the connection is not correct.”

The British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, speaking to reporters in Germany, said British officials were working with the Iraqi authorities to find out how the Britons were abducted and to secure their swift release.

In a statement issued by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry late on Wednesday, Mr. Zebari said, “A thorough investigation has been launched into this serious breach of security, and the government is in close contact with British authorities on the developing situation.”

A Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said he was unaware of any communication as of Wednesday night with the kidnappers. The leading theory among American and British diplomats, the official said, is that the kidnapping was the work of the Mahdi Army.

The diplomat said that the British business consultant, an employee of BearingPoint, a company in McLean, Va., had been giving a lecture at the Finance Ministry building as part of a contract with the United States Agency for International Development when he was taken.

Reuters reported his name as Peter Moore, attributing the information to Finance Ministry officials. But Steve Lunceford, a spokesman for BearingPoint, said the company was not identifying its employee. “We are fully cooperating with local and international authorities to ascertain facts surrounding this incident and are supporting efforts to ensure the employee’s safe release,” he said.

At least one other non-Iraqi was in the building at the time of the kidnapping but was not abducted, possibly because he was hidden in a separate room, according to a Western diplomat.

In raids unrelated to the search for the kidnappers, the American military said it had detained five people suspected of being insurgents and one person suspected of being a cell leader during a raid in Sadr City. The raid focused on members of a network suspected of importing roadside bombs and weapons from Iran.

One person was killed in Sadr City when a car bomb exploded, an Interior Ministry official said.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed responsibility for shooting down an American helicopter that crashed in Diyala Province on Monday.

In the statement, the group said its operatives had shot down the helicopter and killed “the two crusader pilots.”

The American military confirmed the crash and confirmed that the two pilots were killed, but had not publicly announced the cause, though Iraqi officials have said the helicopter was shot down.

Five people were killed and 15 wounded on Wednesday when mortar shells landed in downtown Falluja, west of Baghdad, a hospital official said.

In Hilla, south of Baghdad, three Iraqi soldiers were killed Wednesday in an early morning attack on their checkpoint, the local police said.

Ten people were killed, including four policemen and an Iraqi soldier, in fighting that began after the police tried to arrest people suspected of being Sunni Arab insurgents in Khalis, north of Baghdad, the police said.

The bodies of 30 people who had been shot were found in different districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, the police said.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.